One of Chi­na’s biggest bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies is hit­ting the ground run­ning in 2021.

Shang­hai Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals broke ground Mon­day on a $1.8 bil­lion, 3.2 mil­lion-square-foot in­dus­tri­al park ded­i­cat­ed to R&D work in the bustling field of cell and gene ther­a­pies as well as man­u­fac­tur­ing ther­a­peu­tic an­ti­bod­ies, the firm said.

The mas­sive site is lo­cat­ed in Pudong New Area’s Zhangjiang area and will see con­struc­tion take place in two phas­es — 1.08 mil­lion square feet for the first, and 2.15 mil­lion square feet for the sec­ond. News of the ground­break­ing and ex­pan­sion project was first re­port­ed by SHINE, a dig­i­tal news out­let of the Shang­hai Dai­ly.

Zuo Min, Shang­hai Phar­ma’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and pres­i­dent, said the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try park will fea­ture both in­no­va­tion-in­cu­ba­tion-ser­vice and in­dus­tri­al­iza­tion plat­forms to help star­tups com­mer­cial­ize lab re­search projects, SHINE re­port­ed.

“The new site could great­ly ex­pe­dite new drug re­search and the com­mer­cial­iza­tion process in Shang­hai, mak­ing the city more at­trac­tive for new re­search projects from home and abroad,” Zuo said.

The in­cu­ba­tion plat­form will cov­er rough­ly 538,000 square feet while an­oth­er 861,000 square feet will be al­lo­cat­ed for an­ti­body man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties, the com­pa­ny said. The to­tal vol­ume of an­ti­body re­ac­tors is ex­pect­ed to reach 120,000 liters.

Shang­hai Phar­ma’s man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ties cur­rent­ly fo­cus on ther­a­peu­tics in on­col­o­gy, cere­bro­car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, CNS drugs, and im­munol­o­gy, among oth­er ar­eas.

Over the past three years, the com­pa­ny has worked to ex­pand not on­ly in Chi­na, but in the US and Eu­rope as well. In 2018, the com­pa­ny pub­li­cized its in­tent to hunt for Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing and R&D cor­po­ra­tions that it could part­ner with and ac­quire Chi­na rights from to bol­ster its dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness.

As part of those ef­forts, the com­pa­ny opened a fa­cil­i­ty in San Diego in 2018, which has quick­ly launched ef­forts in myr­i­ad on­col­o­gy drug and an­ti­body pro­grams.

Shang­hai’s pipeline in­cludes cirm­tuzum­ab, a mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body drug that tar­gets man­tle cell lym­phoma and chron­ic lym­pho­cyt­ic leukemia, in Phase I/II clin­i­cal tri­als, ac­cord­ing to the con­glom­er­ate’s web­site. It al­so has TK216, a small mol­e­cule seek­ing to tar­get Ew­ing sar­co­mas—which present as pe­di­atric bone and soft tis­sue can­cer— in a Phase I study in pa­tients with re­lapsed or re­frac­to­ry Ew­ing sar­co­mas.

The drug­mak­er is al­so in pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of ROR1 CAR-T, a cell ther­a­py which doesn’t at­tack healthy cell tis­sue but may pro­vide im­mune re­spons­es to can­cer­ous cells in hema­to­log­ic and sol­id tu­mors. The San Diego site is aid­ing its Shang­hai home base with test­ing and de­vel­op­ment of On­corine, or on­colyt­ic virus­es, which pref­er­en­tial­ly in­fect and kill can­cer cells.

In the same way that the FDA signs off on flu vaccines every year without requiring large clinical trials to measure their efficacy, the FDA may employ a similar strategy in authorizing variant-focused versions of the mRNA vaccines.

As the world braces for more data on the latest variant Omicron, which may reduce vaccine efficacy, top vaccine developers like Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have promised they can pull together a new vaccine targeted against a specific Covid variant in about 100 days. Since Omicron emerged last week, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and J&J have all said they’ve begun work on Omicron-specific vaccines, if needed.

Dutch VC Forbion is hopping on the ever-lengthening SPAC train.

To be led by Jasper Bos, who joined Forbion Growth as a general partner back in May just after the fund closed at $428 million, Forbion European Acquisition will target late-stage opportunities in the life sciences industry in Europe to merge with and bring onto Nasdaq.

Cyril Lesser, senior controller at Forbion, will be the CFO while Bos serves as CEO.